The Column

Motto: Do the Thing the Person You Want to be Would Do - and Eventually that will be Who You Are. Does Anyone Remember When I Used to Write Everything in My Blog in Book-Title-Capitalization-Case?   That was annoying. Dan Carlin's Hardcore History Podcast is an incredible thing. The dude puts out audiobook-length episodes for free. Better yet, they're actually good & entertaining. I didn't care about history at all going in - and now it's slightly interesting! If you've not checked them out, you should. I bring up the Hardcore History Podcast because I was listening to his most recent episode and he sort of nonchalantly throws out a reference to the Vision from the Avengers. Shortly after that, he made a reference to Captain America. In another podcast I listen to, This Week in Tech, they were talking about Thanos the other week. It's really neat to be a fan of comic book stuff right now. These characters that I'd only ever slightly heard of back ...

Motto: HELLO RANDOM PERSON GOOGLING FOR REVIEWS! I wrote this for you! Backstory: I obsessed about backpacks for a few months. I was in a loop where I researched, made lists, Googled, read reviews, watched reviews, went to stores, then started the process all over again in search of the "perfect" bag to buy. I spent a lot of time on Reddit's /r/onebag , /r/backpacks , and /r/EDC . I found the website Carryology  and YouTubers  Chase Reeves  and Bo Ismono . It started (over a year ago, actually) with the GORUCK GR1 - but a few months back expanded to other GORUCKs, the Evergoods CPL24 , the Tom Bihn Synapse 25 , REI's Rucksacks , and various other bags that you can only pre-order from Kickstarter . About two months ago I stumbled across the Timbuk2 "Never Check Expandable Backpack ". Being a long-time Timbuk2 owner and proud writer of the  top, most helpful review on Amazon's page for the Timbuk2 Command Messenger bag , finding this bag felt li...

Motto: Everybody Needs a Hobby I have put a lot of the three major resources into crafting a home gym. I'm proud of it and it's one my favorite things about my house... but it doesn't have any way to do cardio. Your standard fix to this is "buy a treadmill off Craigslist". My issue is, I've got crap joints and treadmills historically cause me problems after a couple of minutes. Also treadmills are large and generally not something I've ever been excited about. In my experience, rowing for a couple minutes is a better warm up than jogging, and a rowing machine tends to hold its value. Because rowing machines hold their value, any one that's used and worth buying is incredibly expensive . That link isn't to a specific example, it's just a search of Rowing Machines in the KC area. I assume at any given point in the future you'll be able to click it and see I'm right. So, they're expensive, but they're also simple. A rowing mac...